Ex-president Gerald Ford dies

Not sure quite what to say about this. I kind of liked the guy. He seemed fairly harmless, a rather rare trait in a politician.

I got magic for Christmas, how about you?

Music for the kitchen after a forever-feeling silence. Rum Tum Tugger is playing now.

A new hatchet. Someone who shall not be named broke the one the boss bought me as a housewarming present (pun intended) twenty-odd years ago. Only a truly determined youth could actually break an all metal hatchet. And of course I have one.

Warmth for my Sunday chair, sewed by my dear mother's loving hands, a beautiful, wonderful, completely perfect lap robe in glorious blues and yellows.

Useful knowledge, something to read while I sit in that favorite chair, Beer's History of Fulton and Montgomery Counties.

And footie socks, tasty tea, a bird feeder and cookies, what a very wonderful holiday it was.

Thank you all very much!

Tis the Great Day

Merry Christmas to all,
Special friends and family of course,
And to all those we have "met" through the wonderful dialog that is blogging,
We wish you the best that the future has to offer,
And a great day today,
Thanks for making Northview Diary all thebest fun the Internet has to offer!
The Northview Crew

Scenes from the Christmas Bird Count

**Photos of my aunt and uncle's farm, taken by my baby brother, who was willing to scale the barbed wire fence at the top of the hill in the mud and the rain to get them.

Christmas bird count

Today was our area National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count. We have participated for many years and have a small territory in the Johnstown area. This year rain was predicted and we were pretty gloomy about our prospects. However, almost as soon as we set out we started seeing a lot of birds. The woods were alive with the musical calls of chickadees and the strident shouts of gangs of blue jays. We saw juncos, tree sparrows, mourning doves and turkeys. Some years we don't see any cardinals at all, but this year we saw four. Oddly we only saw one house sparrow and very few starlings or pigeons. Usually they are numerous.

One of the high points of the day was startling a female harrier out of a tree and getting to watch her hunt. She flew with the typical low, teetering marsh hawk pattern over a golden field of left over hay, mixed with dark brushy areas, along the edge of an evergreen woods. It took her three hits, but she finally caught some kind of rodent, I am guessing a large vole, and flew across the road to land not far away to eat it. Suddenly a red-tailed hawk swooped out of nowhere and tried to steal her lunch. She was faster though and got away with it safely. The red tail retreated to a nearby snag and fluffed his feathers in irritation.

We also saw well over a hundred ring billed gulls, which although common in summer or down on the river where we live, are not generally seen in large numbers in our count area. Because of the weather and the hideous holiday shopping traffic, we didn't see either the number of species or the volume of birds that is normal, but we had many nice experiences.

In one woody swamp along a seasonal use road we sat for a few minutes in the center of a huge flock of tree sparrows. We called it thirty, but there were surely many more than we actually saw as we were surrounded by the flock. Their calls were so musical it was like sitting in the center of a symphony of tiny tinkling chimes and bells.

One of the not so high points of the day was seeing what I am almost, but not quite, positive was a goshawk. It flew up right next to the car in a very high traffic area. I got a very good but fleeting look, and it was impossible to go back and look again, so I didn't claim it. The second low point was looking really, really silly as we drove along that same little dirt road. We kept hearing the two note chirp of feeding chickadees and eagerly scanning the woods for them. None there. We looked. And looked. And drove. And looked some more. Lots of chirps. No birds. Suddenly we realized that the sound was remarkably rhythmic.....because it was a squeaky wheel on the truck.
Oh, well, you can't win them all. We had a great day, saw lots of family and enough good birds to make it worth the driving and peering through binoculars.

Hybrid marijuana

Why can't they do something like this with corn or some other useful (and legal) plant?

*You can buy corn seed that produces a plant that is resistant to pesticide, but you sure can't plant it any time you want to or get yields like in this story!

The sun is low in the sky now

No place like home for the holidays

Liz and Becky are out of school for a month! No classes until the middle of January.

Love and joy come to you…

I have lovely Stewart’s eggnog in my coffee this morning, thanks to Becky. It is SO good. And so festive!

And to your wassail too.

Alan will be done with classes for a week on Friday. Then we will all be home together for Christmas.

And God rest you and send you a happy New Year..

Christmas Bird Count is Saturday. Riding around our territory all day counting numbers and listing species. As much fun as you can have and still be legal. And Mom and Dad have an OWL this year!!

And God send you a happy New Year.

Lethal Frog Fungus

*One of the Northview Frogs of Summer*

This is wiping out entire species and populations of frogs all around the Caribbean. I hope it doesn't come north.

Snow like meal, snow a great deal

*But what does snow like perlite mean?*

A sheepish posse

A sheepish little tale

.....or they aren't as dumb as they look!

A little background. We have two very old sheep left over from the days when I kept a small flock to train Border collie puppies. They spin not, nor do they toil. They are, in fact, pets. One, called Freckles, is white (well dingy grey and yellow really, but they call that white in sheep) with brown spots on her nose. The other, named BS, is very, very black. They have the run of the place and generally hang with the biggest animals they can find, in order to have protection from coyotes. Right now this translates to seven pregnant heifers that run with the milk cows if they are outdoors, or live in a shed by the barnyard when the cows are inside. They also have the use of the barnyard. However, sheep can walk right under the barnyard gates, so they go where they will.

This morning the boss finally confessed to me something that happened way back on Monday. He was feeding late because a certain teenaged boy hung around in the house watching TV instead of going out to help him. It was full dark. The lights went out on the tractor. (A short in the wiring I guess.) Anyhow, he dumped a pile of haylage in the barnyard so the heifers wouldn't leave while he was doing the job and proceded to feed the milk cows. Then he took one last trip up to the corn pile for a bucket load of corn silage for the other bunch of heifers that is still out on the hill.

When he dumped the bucket in the heifer pasture there was an indignant blat from somewhere in front of the tractor out in the dark. He ran around to find a very unhappy BS shaking corn off herself, as Freckles ran up from behind him, eager to catch up with her pal. He had somehow scooped the old sheep out of the ag-bag (where she had been helping herself to corn in the dark) and given her a free ride over to the pasture in the tractor bucket along with the corn. She was not a happy ovine!

Which she proved yesterday, when he was standing in front of the milk house chatting with the repairman who came in to work on the bulk tank washer. She sauntered right up to him and let him scratch her between the ears. Then she nonchalantly backed up, got some real good traction, and charged, nailing him right on his bad knee. She has never done anything like that before. She is generally much the nicer of the two sheep and rarely bothers anybody.
Tell me she wasn't just lying in wait for a chance to get even! I swear I am still laughing.

Citation R Maple

*Bull Calf*

He is about five minutes old in this picture and was standing up looking for his first breakfast about twenty minutes later. (Now if only he had been a heifer.) His mama, Eland, has had ten calves even though she is only ten years old. (Normally, she might possibly have had eight in that time.) This is because she has had two pairs of twins, one set of bulls and last year twin heifers, which we named Epic and Etc.
Her oldest living daughter, Egrec, is expected to have her first calf in February. Epic and Etc have the same sire so all three are full sisters, by a bull we once owned named Foxfield-Doreigh NB Rex. He was a son of the famous Ned Boy bull. I am sorry to get a bull calf, but delighted that so far old Eland is looking pretty good, standing up and eating (and licking her new baby of course). She didn't like the camera much, which is why the photo is so poor. I wanted to get out of the manger and leave her alone.

The progression of darkness

It is pure dark when we go to the barn in the morning…unless the moon is gleaming at the zenith like a cold pearl in a sea of jet. Then there is an unearthly freezing light making spooky shadows behind everything on the lawn. The lawn mower looks like a grizzly bear and the garden pond is the black lagoon. Orion is stomping his way across the heifer barn ridgepole, bound straight north to the horizon. It is dark as ink. Dark as black velvet. Dark as night.
The rooster is crowing.


It is half dark when we are finished with morning chores. Although a flashlight isn't needed, it is dim enough that it is easy to remember to take the one we used to get to the barn back to the house to illuminate our evening stroll. Orion has gone to bed and the moon is long gone.
The rooster is crowing.


At seven, when the girls are warming the Dakota up for the drive to SUNY Cobleskill, and Alan is rushing through a pre-bus shower, it is sorta dark. You can see, but all is shrouded in a misty, clinging gloom. It is not a pretty time of day.
The rooster is crowing.



It is sorta dark again when the girls get home. (Unless it is Monday or Wednesday, when they have late classes.) Then it is pure dark when the beam from their headlights sweeps the gloom away as it precedes them up the driveway.
The rooster gets in one last rebel yell at the sight of the light.


It is half-dark when the guys go out to night feed. By the time they are done, you can trace their progress by the tractor lights out on the hill.


It is pure dark when we start to milk again and pitch dark when we are done. Orion is standing on the eastern horizon, pulling on his boots for his nightly trek across the sky.
At least the rooster has finally wound down for the night.

The piggies, they are a changin'

*Click here to see Piggies then*


*Piggies now*




*Why they call them piggies in the first place*

I feel lucky

And pampered. My cow, Frieland Profit Eland, an elderly lady of ten summers, is expecting a calf by Citation R Maple sometime during the next few days. And last night Liz got up TWICE with her and the boss checked her for me this morning, so I didn't have to go out to the barn in the middle of the freezing night at all. BIG thanks to both of them. No baby yet, but keep your fingers crossed......

Lace making, no bobbin, no thread

Trans fat ban

Here is a wonderful advertisement from the Center for Consumer Freedom on New York City's new trans fat band. I will agree to food control when they pry my last chocolate chip cookie from my cold, dead hand!

Chicken on the garden pond pickin' out snow